Happy Anniversary

Today, May 24, 2013 sees the seventh anniversary of the Central Retinal Veon occlusion which began my loss of sight in my left eye.

I remember the moment well. I was actually painting the bathroom of our new home. I was painting the wall white and suddenly my vision went fuzzy. I knew that was bad straight away.

I told my wife, and we got to a doctor pretty quickly. That doctor said I was ok, leave it a few weeks. At that point I made a mental note to change doctors A.S.A.P. but get the eye seen too first. Then there was a frantic series of calls to eye doctors. The first that I saw was irate that I had called as an emergency and made him cancel his lunch. Not going there again. The next eye doctors office we called from our cell phones in the car. They saw this was a real emergency and had everything set up to see the doctor within minutes of arriving.

Since that day seven years ago, my file has grown so thick that  it takes the nurses at the office two hands to lift and my doctor and I even discuss the possibility of introducing a frequent visitor miles option for me or at least placing a memorial plaque on the latest laser in memory of my service to her office.

Without that CRVO or the subsequent macular degeneration this blog may never have happened.

Happy Anniversary!

Macular Degeneration

The most frustrating part of having macular degeneration is the constant question of how bad will my sight be today?

As things go my eyesight is pretty bad. I can barely see more than five feet and that distance can make things look pretty foggy. My eyesight can vary, day yo day and sometimes seemingly hour by hour. For instance when I wake in the morning it may take me an hour or so to be able to see my hands.  Other days I can wake and see them just fine.

There is always a constant fog in my world. Make things brighter and the glare makes it worse, make things darker and all things quickly disappear into the blackness.

At this stage of the disease I think my retina is just about finished. Maybe it may be reversed but at 51 years old I cannot imagine the economic benefits of being able to see again would warrant treatment for much longs. Blindness is an ever changing disorder in my case. I can sometimes see something but more of the time these days white/grey fog is about all I see from my right eye, my left descended into blackness quite some time ago.

Treatments of laser and Avastin and Lucentis have played their part in keeping total blindness at bay, but as time passes these seem less and less effective after six years.

 

Looking Back at New Year Resolutions

With the mid point of 2013 fast approaching, can you believe we are in the last few days of May already? I decided to go back and look at my New Year Resolutions for 2013.  Back then I had just one resolution with work in mind.

I wanted to return to work by the end of January. I did just that with two weeks to spare.

Also I had just been able to walk across town to Starbucks for a coffee. Saturday I walked across town and back for a coffee. That was not a first time doing that though. I can do that now most days, while it is cool enough, but with temperatures now almost daily in the mid 90's Fahrenheit not too often.

My walking regime is now up to full again even allowing for another recent spell in hospital.

I am walking a one and a half mile or two mile route every day. So am very happy with that. The milage also doesn't include short walks to the bathroom and across my workplace. Though they would add something they do not add a lot of walking to my day.

With just one week to go now until the Guide Dogs for the Blind home visit, I am about where I wanted to be exercise wise in January and my New Years Resolution was fulfilled so definitely a good year for resolutions.

Movies

Movie going has becomr much easier in recent months. As I posted before Christmas the Regal Cinema chain here in Fresno, CA. has up graded its cinemas to have audio description of the movies as they screen them.

At first there was some problem actually getting the customer service people to actually set up the small black box correctly. Seemingly the box has two settings H or B.

H I take to mean for use with a hearing aid or some such thing. B suggests to me Blind or visually impaired for those who insist on our disability being described in the most ineffective politically correct way.

Anyway the wrong setting means the little black box is completely useless for my needs but sometimes it takes time to have a customer service person recognize that I know what setting I need better than they do.

Barring that moment when one finds a wrongly set little black box and having to trudge to the customer service desk two or three times to have them reset the thing, I now really enjoy the movies again.

I am looking forward to a bumper crop of Summer movies, Iron Man 3 was great. Star Trek looks good and what another Superman may do, well?  Who knows?

 

The Day I Died

I have come to the conclusion lately that I am coming to a new period of my life. There was my childhood, my teenage years, adult single life etc.

Then a couple of weeks ago there was the day I died.

Of course you are not now reading the words of a "Ghost" writer. I am back again at my keyboard typing today as I am in a hard work type of mode. Dictating to Dragon Naturally Speaking is for my slower days.

Anyway. Three weeks ago, today was in fact the day I died.

I had gone to the doctors a couple of days before and complained of a pain in my left side. I had a cough and was not surprised to have him say that I had probably strained a muscle in my ribs coughing too hard. I had pulled one of those muscles many years ago in a car accident, the seat belt held me so tight it pulled one of the rib muscles. I concurred the pain was about the same.

He did not send me home however, this was cause to delay and send me to hospital. Two days of tests showed nothing wrong. Thumbs up for the pulled muscle diagnosis I thought.

Then just one procedure to do. There I was all wired up to a heart monitor and a nurse prepared my arm for a new I.V. drip for the duration of the procedure.

I recall her saying "Just a  prick."

I answered "OK, but I feel faint."

Next thing I recall was the room was full of about twenty people, shouting and calling to me and each other.

Some people called on me to look at them, and I remember getting irritated with them saying, "I am blind. I can't really see you."

Anyway. My mutterings gained a rapid quieting in the room. As people began to settle down and move out slowly.

What had happened? Not long after the nurse had heard me say I felt faint, my heart had stopped beating for over thirty seconds. It had then started and stopped again over the next several minutes. Finally continuing to beat strongly.

For several minutes I had hung  between life and death. There were no mystic revelations. Just quiet peace. Most worrying was it was all too easy to just die. Way too easy.